MU| F e a t u r e s
M
anchester graduates
are no strangers to
improving the human
condition. But Steve
Mock ’77 reflects the
University mission at a much higher altitude
than most.
When he’s not teaching chemistry at the
University of Montana Western, Steve is often
teaching mountain climbing at the nonprofit
Khumbu Climbing Center (KCC) in Phortse,
Nepal, 15 miles from the base of Mount
Everest. The KCC program is designed
to provide safety and technical training to
people who work in the climbing and trekking
industry – a huge part of the economy in one
of the poorest countries in the world.
The training Steve provides his Nepali
students enhances their ability to earn an
income, support their families and, by
climbing more safely, increase their life
expectancies. Because of that, Steve calls it
one of the most rewarding experiences of his
life. “They love the mountains and they love
climbing,” says Steve, “but they are also doing
this with a tremendous amount of motivation
because it is their livelihood.”
Steve and his brother, Alan, a 1983
Manchester graduate, spent their formative
years in North Manchester. Their mother,
JoAnne, an MU alumna, taught elementary
school in town. Their father, Robert, was
the campus pastor and taught sociology. “I
looked at my dad and his colleagues and what
they did for a living, what they did for other
people,” Steve says, “and it inspired me to do
the same thing.”
The outdoors inspired him too. Steve
developed a passion for wilderness adventure
early in his life. “I just absolutely fell in love
with it,” he says. His interest deepened years
ago when he and his wife, Jan (Miller) ’75,
drove through Grand Teton National Park,
and he saw the mountain that inspired the
park’s name. “I immediately knew that I was
going to climb it,” Steve says. “I couldn’t
imagine not climbing that mountain.”
He began exploring what he needed to do
to climb Grand Teton and, after mastering
certain skills, he realized that there was always
more to learn. “You get drawn deeper and
deeper into the process,” says Steve, who
has scaled the Tetons, and other peaks in
the western United States, Alaska and South
America.
The combination of mental and physical
strength that it takes to conquer a mountain is
what draws Steve to climbing. “Knowing that
it is going to take a lot of mental wherewithal
and a lot of physical strength and skill and
knowledge,” he says, “there isn’t much that is
more intensely satisfying for me.”
The risk is thrilling, he adds. “I found my
Ph.D. work so intensely satisfying, but there
was a different kind of risk” with mountain
climbing, he says.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in biology,
Steve taught high school science in Montana
for a while. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry
at Montana State University and has taught
chemistry at Montana Western in Dillon,
Mont., where he and Jan live, since 1991.
He combines his love for teaching and
climbing on his trips to Nepal where he is
the co-director of KCC. “Knowing that our
students are appreciative, their families are
appreciative, the communities in the Khumbu
Valley are appreciative – that is something that
I am very much proud of.”
Graduates of the KCC program are actively
sought for employment. One man has reached
the summit of Mount Everest 16 times,
another KCC grad has reached it 11 times.
Steve says that watching his Nepali students
go from lives of poverty to owning their own
homes and being able to send their kids to
school is something special. “You see what a
difference the program makes,” he says.
Alan Mock, a professor of sociology at
Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wis., who
has climbed mountains with Steve, is proud
of his older brother. “When he comes back, I
am still startled with what he does,” Alan says.
“It’s a wonderful thing and he does a great job
with it.”
By Ben Ogden ’12
On opposite page: Steve Mock ’77 poses in the Grand
Teton National Park in Wyoming; (inset) Steve’s wife, Jan
Miller ’75 Mock, joins him on a trip to Nepal. This page,
from left, Steve (right) is pictured with Pete Athans,
co-director of KCC, and one of the world’s foremost
high-altitude mountaineers. Athans
has climbed Mount Everest seven
times; Karma Sherpa is a longtime
friend of Steve’s in Nepal; and ladders
are lashed together in a fashion used
to bridge crevasses in Nepal’s rugged
terrain.
Manchester | 27